How Kickstarter Got Gay Marriage Into Massive Chalice

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In Double Fine’s Massive Chalice, heroes follow one of (videogame) life’s most well-worn paths: fight demons, fight demons, fight demons. But these heroes age, and their blood slowly ceases its boiling. They grow old and begin to seek out someone else to warm their weary bones. Also, to birth and raise the most powerful combat babies in all the realm because, you know, demons. Still, it’s a rather traditionally minded system at heart, so I had to ask: where do gay couples enter the picture, if at all? Massive Chalice lead Brad Muir was honest: that issue totally slipped his mind… at first. But then Kickstarter backers swooped in to save the day. Hurrah! It is, however, an ending that Muir doesn’t think would’ve been quite so happy had a traditional publisher been in the mix.

To hear Brad Muir tell it, Tim Schafer makes worlds first and systems second. Muir, meanwhile, does it the other way around. He just makes things work, then he worries about the details.

He acknowledges, however, that maybe this time around, he should’ve worried about the details a teensy bit sooner.

“We did not talk about gay marriage until we launched the Kickstarter,”

“We did not talk about [the possibility of gay marriage] until we launched the Kickstarter,” he tells RPS. “We were so focused on pure pragmatic mechanics and how it would work and coupling and all these things that we hadn’t [considered it]. That was something I got kinda blindsided by. That was really unfortunate. It kinda makes me feel shitty that it’s not something I’d thought of. I think it’s sort of hetero privilege that I didn’t see it coming.”

It’s not that Muir doesn’t want his game to embrace people of all codes, creeds, and backgrounds, either. He just made a mistake. But then, that’s why Double Fine opted to bring the idea of Massive Chalice straight to Kickstarter instead of going with a stretch goal and prototype-oriented “pre-order model”: because they know they’re not perfect.

“One of the cool things is we have the opportunity to think about it and address it because we brought it to the community,” says Muir, suddenly grinning. “We brought it to a broader group of people, and then there were some people who brought it up and wanted to talk about it. There’s a raging thread on our forums.”

So hurrah, hugs and well-muscled sexytimes for all. This, Muir figures, is the optimal outcome. Everybody wins, and then they all get married. But what would’ve happened if Double Fine hadn’t fulfilled the conditions to unlock real life’s good ending? The contagious enthusiasm in Muir’s voice wilts a bit as he explains:

“If we had gone with a publisher on this, I really think [it wouldn’t have ended well]. Because you sign the deal, you go underground, you start working on the game, you don’t talk to the community or anybody, and you get so focused on all these other aspects of the game. Just making it work – and all the tactical combat and mechanical things. We might just overlook something like same-sex coupling all the way until we announce the game. And then people say, ‘Hey, what about gay marriage?’ And we’re like, ‘Fuck,’ because we’ve already worked on it for more than a year.”

“If somebody did think about it during that whole thing, they would’ve probably just killed it because it is such a controversial issue. They’d probably not want to have it associated with the game at all. And then they’d give me a PR company line that I’d have to tell in every interview, and it’d be super, super shitty. And then any gay gamers who are coming to the game and playing it and wanting to see themselves represented would just be really disappointed.”

Either way, no bueno. Fortunately, Double Fine was able to reconsider their systems ages before ever implementing them, and the resulting discussion’s given rise to some rather interesting ideas.

“We’ve been talking about ways to actually incorporate gay marriage,” Muir continues. “One of the suggestions was to allow couples – male/female or otherwise – to contribute to the good of the realm via means other than childbirth. So couples could raise children or research technology. That’s one interesting way to handle it. And then if you couple it with the ability to foster children, I think that’s a way you could have same-sex couples in the game. And it’s optional. People can choose to engage it or not.”

“The other option is to be less explicit about it. Maybe these aren’t marriages. Maybe you’re just retiring two heroes in the same keep. Because I really like it when more procedural, systemic games allow the player to kind of use their imagination a little more to fill in the gaps of what’s actually happening.”

Ultimately, though, Muir is keen to point out that Massive Chalice still has a long way to go. Someday, the chalice will be massive indeed, but at this point it’s not even on level with Chip from Beauty and the Beast. But he’s aware now. His eyes and ears are open. And while his absolute foremost goal is to make the best, most enjoyable game possible, he also wants everyone to come along for the ride.

“I don’t know where we’re gonna land on it,” he admits, “but I will say that I want the game to be inclusive. I don’t think that hurts anyone. If you as a gamer feel like you’re more represented in this thing, that’s only gonna deepen your personal story. I really like emergent story stuff, and I think that only stands to improve emotional connections to these heroes. That’s only gonna be a good thing.”

Check back soon for the full interview, in which we discuss plans for everything from ground-level combat to Civilization-style multi-generational mechanics, emergent game systems, whether or not Double Fine’s truly done with publishers, the potential dishonesty of rooting a Kickstarter in ideas instead of confirmed features, Muir’s frightening inability to stop almost killing himself, and ska music.

516 Comments

Hell, it’s fantasy, who says a little magic can’t help two dudes have a baby?

Or add some asexual species, or species with trigenders.

Fantasy and Sci-Fi is where we’re allowed to explore what it means to be human by making non-humans that personify some facet of humanity, so make some species that explore gender concepts.

Not to mention that Ancient and Medieval times were a lot gayer than most people know.

Remember that Spartans, some of the greatest warriors in the history of mankind, fucked a lot of butt. Buttloads of butt. They pounded man ass like it was going out of style… which I guess it sort of did for a while.

There are indeed homophobic comments below. Sadly we also have the opposite excess with commenters being called out as homophobic because they don’t see the necessity of the inclusion of gay couples in that game.
Add 200 more comments and this thread will derive in total trolling…

This isn’t one of those “two sides to every story” things. People arguing “I don’t see the necessity of adding X” are doing a more tactful version of “I don’t like X and I don’t want it in my game because the prospect of it scares me.”

How about if you don’t want a fantasy gay marriage don’t get one! And the people who want one can get one! HOW ABOUT THAT SIR

@joyless: I don’t see any moral necessity of adding the option for grandmas and grandpas as protagonists in most games (a larger demographic than homosexuals!). This does not mean that I don’t like grandmas and grandpas, or that they scare me.

Actually, I think it does. And it should. Old age is scary. The impairment of physical and/or mental ability, the marginalization by society, the fear of an approaching death, and watching others your age slip away… it’s quite frightening. So when you say that grandparents don’t scare you, I can’t really take you seriously. There IS a moral necessity that games grapple with old age; and I think this game does! Remember the whole concept, when to retire your hero? Actually, Crusader Kings 2 deal with it as well.

“I don’t need” and “I don’t like” are two separate things. I got several gay friends, but I couldn’t care less whether or not a game does include the option for gay marriage. If a developer decides to go the extra mile, fine, but I doubt it plays any role in my decision about whether or not to back the game.

No, it means that I can cope with the fact that a game might not include such an option without rallying the troops and spit vile at a developer. Things would be different if somebody came out and said “We refuse to include such a godless thing in our game because gay marriage is the devil”.

It was merely to introduce the Captain to the possibility that not explicitely asking for it and being fine with the concept itself are not mutually exclusive, though it might have come out slightly wrong indeed.

I wasn’t expecting it, and frankly, I’m going to hang onto my faith that some time, people might react to a nice, fun, inclusive gesture like this with something other than finding excuses to try and smother it.

Exactly that. Why it would even be an issue, other than really horrid attitudes in a few people, I will never know. If something is never represented, or constantly questioned when it is, it will never be present as something that just. Bloody. Exists. Ever.

(Also the ultimate solution of our horrible agenda is to make demon babies through occult magicks, but we rarely state so.)

I really think the internet needs a new word meaning, very specifically, ‘dangerous sarcasm’.
May I suggest in this spirit that the preceding comment was, in fact, ‘sparkastic’.
Being sparkastic in a comment thread is somewhat like playing with matches in a firework factory.

Ugh, this whole definition thing is just absurd and really irritates me.

To take the language side of things – presumably to you a “personal computer” is therefore an assistant who performs calculations on your behalf? Oh no, wait because that definition of “computer” is archaic and nobody uses it any more?

To take the legal side of things – previously marriage was considered to be a legal construct between and man and a woman, with many attendant conditions. If you change the law you change the definition. If you disagree with that then perhaps you would like to tell all the people in other jurisdictions that have different legal constructs called marriage (there are squillions of variables but, for example, some places allow polygamy) that they’re not properly married, to your definition. “Marriage” means what the state that recognises it takes it to mean.

Why not just come out and say that you don’t want gay people to have the same rights as you? If you don’t mind them having the same rights then why not let them call it the same thing as heterosexual people? It’s just a way of saying “you are not like me and will never have what I can have”. Don’t hide behind some utterly ridiculous quibble about definitions.

In my language marriage doesn’t automatically imply that the couple consists of a man and a woman. Your argument is invalid.

And no, marriage is not for having kids, it’s for tax benefits. :P Seriously though, no. You must be living under a rock if you haven’t noticed that a lot of people have kids without getting married or they get married and never have kids.

Um, well words’ meanings change over time, so in the common usage “marriage” can most certainly include homosexual couples. Language is infinitely flexible in the common usage. Thus the only way you can usefully cling to some sort of pedantic claim that “marriage doesn’t mean that!” is if you take a definition fixed in some specific context – in this case the legal context. It shouldn’t really be necessary to state that anyway, because nobody says “those two are married” if they aren’t married in the eyes of the law, do they? Marriage is a specific legal event/status – it has no other linguistic usage (between people anyway – you might say someone is “married to their job” or whatever).

So yeah, the meaning in the legal sense is what people mean when they use the word. Jacob Zuma can say he is married to all his wives and nobody would disagree, because South Africa allows polygamy, even if the UK does not – the state says that he is married, so he is. You may not approve of having multiple wives but you don’t turn around and challenge his status as being married.

On your second point about people getting married to have kids:
a) in the UK at least, I believe that the majority of kids are born out of wedlock.
b) lots of people get married for lots of reasons other than having kids – no way do the vast majority of people get married because they want kids. I am married and have kids but getting married was about declaring my commitment to my wife and also certain legal conveniences that come along with it (I wanted her to inherit my stuff if I died, for example). I think it’s considerably more likely that the vast majority of people get married for these reasons rather than seeing it as a requirement to procreate. Some married people have kids. Some people with kids are married. That’s as far as you can go.
c) in any case, the BS aspect about linking marriage to kids is that it obviously isn’t a prerequisite for a couple to be recognised as married otherwise it would be legally impossible for an infertile heterosexual couple to get married.

Lots of heterosexual couples get married with no intention or even ability to have kids so as an argument for saying that homosexual couples shouldn’t be able to get married it’s completely worthless. In my experience it is though, alas, usually the follow-up argument of someone who pulls out the whole definition rubbish.

Well, in MY language, we don’t have a true word for “marriage”. We have one that means enwifen (to get a wife) and another that means enhusbanden (to get a husband). Still, there is the linguistic hurdle that we call the marriage ceremony an enwifenage, technically meaning that two men can’t marry but two women can (can in the linguistic sense, not the legal sense — women still can’t marry women here). I’m eagerly awaiting for the future to come and same-sex marriages to be considered legal, when we will finally be able to coin enhusbandenage in our language.

You’re making the argument that the definition of marriage is ‘between a man and a woman’. You’re basing that on what, exactly? The society you’re a part of? Turns out you can have different opinions, including the definition of words.

Except that you can, in the Actual Genuine Real World, have gay marriages. It’s pretty hilarious that you’d jump to a pedantic definition-based ‘argument’ and choose one that is in fact, plainly and unambiguously counter to the actual facts.

Alright guys, serious question here. Hearing these news, I have decided to try playing an all-female dynasty in the game. However, I worry it would be sexist, because I’m male and I’m doing it because I find the idea of magical girl-on-girl sex babies adorable.

Do you think the option for having two female vikings love each other should be restricted to female players only? I mean, if you let men do it, they’d be doing it only because “hurr durr lesbians hot hehehe lol”, rather than from actual respect to same-sex marriage.

Bah! Leviticus 23:Skidoo says, “Thou shall not entwine your essence with another man’s essence as you would a woman’s essence.” It’s right before the passage stating, “Thou shall not wear white after Labor Day.”, and right after the passage forbidding us from buying consumer electronics with graven images of fruit on them.

So I was playing the Rogue Legacy demo yesterday, and one of the traits that your character is imbued with on occasion is ‘Gay’. In the menu at the beginning it defines this trait as ‘You’re fabulous!’ which is a bit problematic, but whatever. Other than that, though, it doesn’t seem to do anything. When you die, which you will, you’re given three more children. just like always. It’s not explained, it’s not addressed: Magic? Adoption? Asexual reproduction? To be perfectly honest it never even occurred to me until I read this article.

Magic babies ftw. I’m all for inclusion – this article and the first few posters make me all warm and fuzzy. Thanks for making my day, RPS. There’s enough hate out there as it is. I’m glad a publisher is pushing inclusivity and that it’s being picked up. Hope other devs are paying attention.

Exactly! When in doubt, “Magic did it!” Magic solves all things. Or if it’s sci-fi, then, “Science did it!” Science solves all things.

Really, it is pretty eyerolly that our sci-fi and fantasy games (though this applies to all sci-fi and fantasy mediums, certainly) explore all kinds of lawful/moral and human-augmentation and violence and even terribly written weighty issues like rape and murder and racism/genocide, yet there can’t be gay in it. Oh no, no. That’s the limit! Besides, it eats all the systemly system things and zots and it’s so unrealistic zomgponies run on sentences. Yet, it’s completely okay that these sci-fi and fantasy alien races and culture can be of super humanized sexy lady babes (see: Asari) that pander to very specific ideas. Sure, they can be cross-species compatible! Sure, they can have your babies! Sure, it’s all great when you’re making a sexy lady available for a dude (and for dudes that play ladies, you bet we can make them lesbian for you!). But the moment that turns to gay coupling (guy/guy in particular), then it is suddenly ‘pandering’ or ‘too PC/political’ or ‘unrealistic’ or ‘will cost money better spent elsewhere’ or ‘ruins the system.’ On and on. Please.

Fantasy is fantasy. Sci-fi is sci-fi. We should be reaching out beyond the stretch of limitation and imagination of modern day thought, society, and culture. We should be exploring many subjects and many possibilities. And most of all, we should be making things inclusive and fun for everyone — because this is entertainment meant for all of us. Optional content is optional. If you don’t want it, don’t pursue it.

In the future It will be fully possible to have children via artificial wombs, incubators. The artificial womb, will be: 1. safer 2. healthier 3. more affordable and liberating than natural pregnancy.

Artificial Wombs shall be superior to Natural Pregnancy:
1. Safer because it removes the burden and risks of natural pregnancy
2. healthier: provide the best nutrients and 24/7 observation, fix birth-defects etc.
3. More affordable and liberating: mothers don’t need to take months-off anymore for pregnancy and can do more productive things with their time.

They will be widely available in medical facilities and because of the many advantages will be preferred over the old natural pregnancy.

Let’s turn it around; given that this is a game at least partially about lineage and family, why would you want to exclude certain family types from the game? What reasons are there to not include a kind of marriage that’s perfectly legal in many US states, France and soon-to-be UK?

Personally I hope that a child raised by two guys or gals (whether created by magic or adopted from the rest of the population) is treated just the same as one raised by a heterosexual couple – imagine you’re a kid adopted and raised by gay parents (many of whom exist and are reaching adult age); how would it feel to have a game you’re playing say that you’re less legitimately a child of your parents than other people are of theirs?

Personally I think it depends, for a game made with a non-historic theme, where couples become couples and have kids because they want to settle down or raise a child, and not because of blood and family, I think it is a an insult towards gay people not to allow them to do so. The way that a kid is raised is what makes them who they are anyways, so I see no reason adoption can’t function very similarly to birth; or you could use magic/technology to make same-sex births a thing, if a characters blood actually is important to the magic in your story. Not saying you have to, just that it’s something fantasy ought to have at least sometimes.

From a historical standpoint, not having gay couples makes sense though. When marriages were always arranged and couples only existed for the good of their families, of course it makes sense to limit things; do non-heteros really want anything to do with that time anyways?

Genes are much more important than uprising. Genetically gifted child will be better than its foster parents, and vice versa. You can’t teach talent and mental capacity, biological immunity, nervous system etc.
You also can’t teach promiscuity, analytic/magic thinking (science vs faith) ability to concentrate and learn etc. These things are hardcoded in genes and they define who the child would ultimately be.

What parents can do, is teach the child how to cope with stress, anxiety – self esteem vs low esteem…

“Genes are much more important than uprising. Genetically gifted child will be better than its foster parents, and vice versa. You can’t teach talent and mental capacity, biological immunity, nervous system etc.”
You also can’t inherit talent.

“You also can’t teach promiscuity, analytic/magic thinking (science vs faith) ability to concentrate and learn etc. These things are hardcoded in genes and they define who the child would ultimately be.”

Yes, we are not identical clones of our parents. Every individual is different regardless of racial, cultural or other group.

That being said, different dog breeds are better at different tasks (running, learning, aggressiveness, cuteness) and they are genetically closer than different breeds of people, so intentional elimination of genes’ influence over person’s life would be a lie.

As shocking as it is, child with low IQ biological parents is much more likely to have low IQ even after being brought up by high IQ foster parents. That works both ways.

You obviously can’t teach talent, you may or may not discover it and use it. That’s why talent isn’t a skill, it’s an inherent predisposition for being good at something. Eugenics is a pseudoscience about attempting to genetically cultivate certain population or classify groups based on their prevailing genetic traits…

No – I am not saying anything like that. Future belongs to the hybrids.
I am also not saying that all people are genetically equal – no they are not. Each individual is different, you should be able to see that.

What I am saying is, who we are is much more dependent on our genes than on our uprising.
Nature rules over nurture. If you are denying that, feel free to explain gay/hetero people that they should be able to learn a different sexuality by ulix logic.

Some people are genetically more prone to becoming addicted. Some are more likely to resist a heart disease. Some will be murdering psychopaths. No one would have taught them that.

It’s in the genes.
And genes are, surprisingly, inherited from your ancestors.

I did follow that statement by referring to medieval times, did I not? i.e. the time period Massive Chalice appears to take place in a facsimile to? The period most fantasy imitates? From a historical context royalty very rarely picked whom they might marry, so it follows pretty obviously that if the people arranging the marriages didn’t care about quality of the coupling they never took sexual preferences into account either. Not to mention the church would throw a fit and probably kill everyone.

He is actually quite right, even if he might not have put it in the best way possible, for instance this is an interesting documentary on the parental effect people have on their children: link to dailymotion.com

At one point it brings up an adoption study conducted with over 250 children where to put it simply, children from “stupid/low IQ” parents have been put into families with “intelligent/high IQ” parents and the other way around called the “Colorado Adoption Project” from 1975. The adoptees have been followed for over 30 years and they’ve always bore the traits of their natural parents (correlation to their natural parents was almost always spot on and correlation with their adoptive parents was apparently zero).

Although it would be quite clear why some people wouldn’t want to accept that out of political reasons.

Because the game is about bloodlines and passing down genes to your biological children?

Is it though? We know so little about the game, Muir himself knows little about the game.

IIRC the pitch talks about generations and legacies, he says heroes will nurture children and pass on their experiences, not their genes. The pitch also says the heroes will leave relics that can be used by their children, making them more powerful. This actually sounds like passing on their genes but from the start it was worked as something that does not involve procreation.

Now, he does say the relics will be equipped by members of the same bloodline. But, way I see it, for Muir the priority for his game is to let people see themselves in the game. If he can add gay marriage to reach this end then why not. After all, what’s more important, the legacy or the bloodline?

Biological children do not inherently enforce a legacy, even if traditionally it is seem that way. Plus this is a game set in a magical world, it really isn’t far fetched to have adopted heirs as part of a legacy. I mean, right now I’m thinking of it in terms of typical European loyalty and that’s already assuming too much since all we know is that they’re heroes fighting demons.

Oh, sure if devs want to make a game specifically about heterosexual marriage they’re free to do so.

I think you’re overreacting, though. It’s not as if DoubleFine is opposed to adding same-sex options into the game (as the blog post clearly indicates). Far from it. And, as Muir says there: it’s going to be optional, but it’ll be there for the people who want such a thing.

If it ruins your enjoyment just thinking about it, well, you can always choose not to buy the game.

I guess the problem with that would be that it’s not what the creators (or a decent chunk of their fans) want. Maybe try reading Brad Muir’s quotes above where he says he’d like the game to be inclusive?

Also here’s another reason to include gay marriage: for variety. It’s not like there’s a ton of games with homosexual themes or mechanics – what’s the harm in having some and this being one of them?

If you were saying “oh no, not another game with thick-necked space marines!” or “oh no, not another game with zombies!” then I could see your point… but as it is, I really don’t.

What’s the harm? Being hetero myself I’d rather not wake up some day in a “Forever War” type of world (that is where homosexuality constitutes the norm and being hetero equals being cast away on the fringes of society) . But each to his own, I guess.

So, your objection to inclusiveness is the possibility that it will lead to a situation in which you have to suffer the same way minorities do now?
Disregarding the personal implications, and indeed the inherent unlikeliness of the premise, does that not strike you as hypocritical and unfair?

I actually think it’s an excellent objection that only needs a very little embellishment to become an admirable idea. It’s ugly to think of an imaginary you suffering exclusion because of your hetero sexual orientation in the future, that would be a bad (and absurdly unlikely) world, one to be avoided, for sure. Fortunately, the design of a Doublefine game wont make the difference. Similarly, exclusion of other people for not-hetero sexual orientation is ugly, makes the world worse, and should be changed.

Fortunately, by favouring equal treatment without prejudice due to sexual orientation, we can avoid such a hateful society now and in the future. In the context of video game design, this means designing game worlds that anticipate and imagine a more equal, more queer-friendly world.

Good for Doublefine and Brad Muir for taking on an idea that will make the game cooler, stranger, and hopefully one with a more interesting set of game mechanics.

Yes, it’s too harsh. Those are the things you think about anyone you’re having an argument with. Personal attacks should have no place here, IMO, or if they do, then I don’t. Also, it’s a ridiculous thing to say. You can’t judge someone’s character based on a few responses to blog posts. You can say “I think what you’re saying is stupid”, but you can’t tell if a person is themselves stupid.

Ad homimem attacks may feel good to the person who writes them at the time, but they clutter up space, they upset people to no end, they lower to tone of discussion on the site, they chase away dissenting points of view, they prevent you from learning something new… in other words they’re shortsighted, selfish, and stupid.

Ehh…you’re right. I wasn’t thinking about his character so much as the character of the things he was saying, but even that is probably something I should be keeping to myself. It just strikes me that he was the first one to suggest we were attacking him personally, before anyone even did. Was a bad idea to fall to that level regardless, though.

So basically you’re postulating that if even *some* games include gay characters and themes that we will inevitably find ourselves in a society where homosexuality becomes the norm and heterosexuals are discriminated against. Wow, scary stuff.

But without wanting to be overly rude, can I perhaps question the logical basis of your statement? Because it seems like you’re saying that homosexuality is such an overwhelmingly appealing lifestyle choice that if it’s even mentioned in a handful of games that almost everyone will become gay shortly afterwards. No offence, but I think you might be overselling it.

I’m sure being gay is great and all, but I don’t really think it’s any better than being straight. So I have a feeling that the vast preponderance of media that principally or exclusively features heterosexual characters and situation will just about manage to maintain the status quo.

Still, if you’re worried that you’re on the brink of being swayed and that disturbs you, I’d suggest either (a) loosen up a little and embrace being fabulous, or (b) just don’t buy the handful of games that dare to feature the gays.

P.S. Pretty sure being gay isn’t actually a choice anyway, so unless these ‘pro-gay’ games are going to actually start messing with their players’ genes as well, then society as we know it is probably safe.

What’s the harm? Being hetero myself I’d rather not wake up some day in a “Forever War” type of world (that is where homosexuality constitutes the norm and being hetero equals being cast away on the fringes of society) . But each to his own, I guess.

Right, and them uppity negroes will overthrow and enslave the white man the first chance he gets!

You are projecting. Just because you are happy to live as part of a majority that oppresses and discriminates against others doesn’t mean that the rest of us are.

OH SNAP I JUST IMPLIED YOU WERE HOMOPHOBIC FOR SPURIOUSLY EQUATING EQUAL OPPORTUNITY WITH GAY FASCISM! TRULY, WE’RE BOTH AS BAD AS EACH OTHER! Quick, someone be neutral and balanced, and just sort of sullenly question why we need to talk about gay rights unless we’re at a pride parade.

Sorry, I’d really like to, but in a time where a thing as ‘gay rights’ is an apparent necessity rather than an assumption where everyone enjoys the same rights regardless of gender/sexuality/whatever this kind of homophobic bullshit needs to be called out every damn time, and probably more times.

I’m sure that there are some asexual people who find their pacifist beliefs more important than their sexuality. It’s a mistake and horribly uninclusive not to provide pacifist gameplay. For every game.

Adoption? Fantasy magic? Surrogates? You should be able to ignore this if it doesn’t bother you. It will probably please other people. What’s the problem? Is your suspension of disbelief that fragile? I hope you never examine how hit points work, then!

Developers should include whatever features they want to. I’d probably even use it (when possible my character is lesbian). But the article strikes the tone that it’s somehow a moral requirement to be inclusive in this manner, that it’s a mistake not to have gay relationships. Even if the mechanical reason for the straight relationships is the formation of blood lines. And I’m guessing that’s what sets people off. =)

Did we read the same article? Because the tone I got was more “we didn’t even think of this, our players want it, and we have no reason to not include it” and less “oh god, we’re horrible people unless we shoehorn gay marriage into this!”

Considering their statement earlier that the kickstarter has already yielded serious design cues I’m glad we got a follow up with a solid example.

Not sure why you’re getting more than that here. Maybe include some examples?

Really? It gave me the vibe of “This issue is hot right now and I’ve just been made aware that if I don’t shoehorn it into the game somehow, there will be a backlash.”

It basically makes no sense at all in the context of a game about breeding heroes from other heroes to counter a demonic invasion, which is why it hadn’t occurred to him before. He has to go out of his way to make it a part of the game now of course, whether he wants to or not and whether he feels it’s appropriate for the game or not.

The interesting -and hilariously controversial- option would be if they tried to give a balanced representation of gay marriage in the stated setting. The easy option (and the one they will definitely take) is to alter the setting until it’s one in which gay marriage has no downsides.

This seems like as good a place to insert this point as any. You realise that Double Fine is a group of artists and creative people based in San Francisco? I don’t think gay marriage is a new idea to Brad Muir.

Why don’t we wait and see if he and his team come up with a cool way of incorporating this suggestion from their backers into the game. If they can’t (and I bet you they will), if the game is just better without a mechanic that allows gay parenting (the design issue is about inheritance in the game, far as I can tell, not marriage), I hope they’ll leave it out, and then if they don’t, if this actually does make the final game to be released in a few years worse, then we can all be disappointed for a few hours and then move on and play other games.

The diplomat: Defeat the forces of evil by convincing them that they’d be much happier if they just changed sides and settled down to raise a family

Special Abilities: Demon’s Bloodline – Diplomats are able to interbreed with demons to provide your army with half-demon soldiers. These “Sons of Sparda” have increased physical stats but reduced mental stats, plus resistance to fire. Preferred weapon is sword or flintlock pistol

If the focus is on lineage, it seems odd that you would assume anyone playing a character with a same sex partner would not want access to that part of the game as well.
This being a fictional world, there’s no technical reason why it shouldn’t be that children are solely the product of same sex couples. In which case, to play the game fully, you would have to ‘play gay’. If you would object to that, it seems to me it would only be consistent to object to gay players being forced to play against their own sexuality.

No, because in a world where only same sex couples could reproduce (setting aside for a moment that referring to them as ‘same sex’ would make no sense at all), attraction to your own ‘sex’ would be the evolutionary norm and considered straight , while attraction to the opposite ‘sex’ would be gay.

Actually the whole notion of sexes kinda goes out the window at that point. Why would they be so physiologically different if not for purposes of reproduction? They’d either evolve into the same thing or be two distinct species, in which case fancying the other would be beastiality.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Jimbo, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. You have a whole wonderful variety to learn about of strange methods of sexual reproduction in the natural world. There are hermaphroditic organisms that reproduce sexually: they’re the same sex, but they have reproductive sex! They’re not humans, to be sure, but then, neither are game avatars.

And sexual dimorphism has many functions that aren’t about reproduction.

Yes you could have a fiction where ‘Male Human’ reproduces exclusively with ‘Male Human’ (by magic cuddles or whatever) if you wanted to, and that might be a fun time, but you wouldn’t be making any kind of point that has relevance to real life by doing so.

It’s not like you’d be sticking it to homophobes by requiring them to ‘play gay’ as you put it. If anything it supports their position, just like the ‘magic baby’ idea does. If you have to artificially boost same-sex unions in order to portray them as equal, then you’re conceding that, in reality, they aren’t equal.

Jimbo, you realise Chirez and I are two different people? Personally, I don’t care about sticking it to anyone. I just wanted to share some cool info about the diversity of life. This stuff challenges my sense of what’s normal and not. I actually think that a game that showed the strangeness of the natural world by giving people the same reproductive patterns as other organisms could have a lot to do with the real world and be really interesting. That’s a good idea for a game.

I hope Double Fine find a way to make a cool game using whatever design decisions they feel are best. I’m not a backer, and I’m not particularly invested in the project, but I think it’s really cool that Brad Muir is interested in making a game with mechanics that enable same-gendered pairing. This is cool because he’s responding to a desire from his backers. It’s also cool because it seems to have inspired him to try to refine the design of the game to make the mechanics more robust. I also find it cool because it imagines and models a world that’s friendlier to people I care about than the real world is.

And, hermaphroditic reproduction is varied in nature. As a matter of fact, I don’t know if it exists as an adaptation from sexual reproduction in a sexually dimorphic species. Given the diversity of the natural world, I’d be surprised if it didn’t. More commonly, however, it seems to have evolved from asexual reproduction it evolved either from earlier asexual or from some proto-sexual form of reproduction. In that case, no, it’s not like what you described. It’s not a variation on mammalian heterosexuality, it’s its own thing.

Tbh, if someone gay feels left out because gay marriage is not in this game, I think they are simply being over-sensitive. I understand why they might be over-sensitive at this point, but that doesn’t make it less true. From the pitch I get it’s not like this is Crusader Kings 2 or something. Unless they get to fit it strategically into the game, it should be fine to just leave it out. Frankly, they might get into more murky waters just by including it, unless they let everything just be equal.

Americans especially appear to be a bit gay-marriage focussed right now, which is a good thing, but for this game it is just a non-issue imo.

Intersting choice of words “keeping it out”. A more relevant question is – What is the problem with including it? Does it forever soil your monitor or something?

> If someone wants to make a game about traditional marriage, why would anyone in the world have an issue with that?

Go ahead, make a game literally “about traditional marriage” if that is what you want. But this is another game. A game where people are invited to shape their hero as they want it. Some people want this. Lots of them pledged money to the Kickstarter.

> Fucking odd thing about this – is how to two dudes make a baby, seeing as baby making is a huge part of this game?

Gosh, if only we could look somewhere for an answer to that? How about the real world? Adoption, asking a friend (a lesbian couple for instance. Or a gay couple if we are talking about lesbians) if they want in on it? Or as someone said above – this is fantasy, how about magic?

I think that is essentially what he said, yes. “What is the problem with keeping it out?” Homophobe? Possibly. Privileged and incapable of seeing things from the perspective of those less privileged? Definitely. 100%.

If you or anyone else explode about the word “privilege”, I can tell you that heterosexuality is showed down my throat dozens if not hundreds of times a day, every day of the year. In advertising, in TV, in couples holding hands or making out publicly without fearing angry/disgusted looks or even being assaulted, as I would risk if I would do the same.

Yeah, this isn’t “Mendel’s Greenhouse Simulator”. ‘Bloodlines’ are just one aspect of the game.

‘Bloodlines’ are also a fake concept that in reality is all about upbringing and social capital. So even those who for some reason are squawking about how this is Compromising The Artistic Vision if it isn’t a historically rigorous snapshot of medieval reality, should find this entirely appropriate.

And what would the response have been towards Double Fine if they said, “We understand your concerns, but we feel that homosexual relationships don’t tie into our vision of creating family bloodlines.” We can talk about how developers are allowed to create any game they want, but my guess is that if Double Fine didn’t pursue that, people would be up in arms about how intolerant and bigoted they were. We’re at a point in the discussion of gay marriage where a lot of the decisions people could make are no longer theirs to make. It’s too sensitive of a subject at this point, and understandably so, but it seems that we too quickly devolve to shouts about intolerance and bigotry.

I think it’s fine that they are adding homosexual relationships into the game, I just wonder how reasonable people would react to a reasonable decision to NOT add that feature.

In much the same way that it would not at present be acceptable for a developer to add enslavement of minorities or forced marriage as something that the heroes do without any comments, it’s also not acceptable to have your fantasy magic heroes be unnaccepting of homosexuals without any explanation, or they’ll stop looking like “the good guys”

I see the point you’re trying to make, but I think it would be different for a developer to not add homosexual relationships, versus creating characters that were openly homophobic and hated homosexuals. We often talk about wanting games to be art, but as soon as a developer has a vision that doesn’t mesh with the cultural majority, we rail against them and cast them off.

Maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but I don’t think it’s too far off the mark. If they hadn’t included homosexual relationships, it would have been called a “critical failure” on their part, or a “gross oversight”, or “unfortunate misstep” because games are still seen more as a service than a form of art with the freedom to express a vision. So, maybe now their original plan will change, and they will have to make fundamental changes to their heritage feature, and maybe that will be for the better? We’ll see.

The difference in this case is that the developer was happy to change their direction, but what about a company that has a specific vision? Will they feel heavy pressure to make changes even if it causes them to sacrifice that original plan? Will they be criticized as bigots, misogynists, or racists because they wanted to make a game that we don’t accept because it doesn’t have an option for every demographic? I recognize that I’m the most entitled demographic (white, heterosexual male), but I think there is merit to what I’m saying.

If a developer is making a game with open relationships it’s literally more difficult to restrict marriage between genders, it fails to realize the full reality of the referenced theme and ultimately it cheapens an RPG by limiting the RP part.

It’s just plain dumb to limit your game like that, regardless of politics.

Why are we assuming that everyone wants to play a “good guy” though? I don’t expect a fantasy world to have the same social conventions as liberal democracy 21st century earth. No one should get offended if a fantasy world has common place slavery or rampant homophobia. Although in an RPG the player should probably be given some choice whether to go along with the majority in that world or defy convention.

It’s just people who assume that because someone puts something in a story that they’re advocating that for the real world are kind of annoying.

Crusader Kings II doesn’t have gay marriage, because the time period it’s portraying didn’t. It still has gay characters, and (I think) gay relationships.

The point is that gay people exist, and our games should acknowledge that.

And, for the record, if someone makes a game about how awful gay marriage is, I will fully support the right of that game to exist, just as I support the KKK’s right to make games about how awful black people are. But I will not support those games financially, and will speak out against them to the best I am able. Free speech ain’t a free ride.

Gayness isn’t a problem to me. I have gay and lesbian friends. I don’t distinguish between gay / hetro and whatever else. People are people regardless of orientation.

Gayness isn’t the issue here.

The issue is media and ideas being changed to ‘make people feel included’. Why isn’t Superman a black dude? Why isn’t Batman a ugly fat woman? Because inherent ideas are included into their design. If a game is about bloodlines – why does it have to evoke questions about gay marriage?

Well, any game that features marriage and relationships will create questions. Those questions tend to reflect the sexuality, understanding, and experiences of the person asking them. For a homosexual woman or man, a game about relationships is going to create questions about relationships according to their experiences.. so it makes sense to me. If the developer wants to create a system that allows for multiple kinds of relationships, then I think that is great. A lot of their ideas are just that, ideas. They’re in pre-production which means that everything can be changed.

Just because you have gay friends and you say that you have no issue with them does not make your points any more cogent.

As to your follow-up points. Superman, Batman, Spiderman, and Whateverman you decide to bring up, are all established characters in established worlds (and they are hardly without criticism and still remain the same); MASSIVE CHALICE is not, therefore your analogy here is already flawed. To your point of bloodlines, you seem to hold to the idea that descendants inherit traits from their parent beyond those physical; you need to read up on this to see why this is not the case you think it to be.

Furthermore, you’re asserting the game stick to these (according to you)rules of the real world, but is free to include such things as magic, immortal rulers, demons, and so on but must somehow think twice on including the option for gay marriage.

Well they could include homosexual relationships but then the game could end with a message along the lines of “You live a long happy life with your partner but your heroic bloodlines end here. The demonic incursions continue…”.

Which would be an ironic slap in the face to the homosexual lobby when they’re reminded that homosexuality is abnormal (if it wasn’t mammals would be capable of asexual reproduction)

Same thing can be said about cancer, it’s very natural, even the Neanderthals had it. It’s a singularly American thing this need to be absolutely polarized on social and political issues. it’s like watching two armies of trolls force-feeding each other. Forget about gay marriage, what we really need to ban is American debates. And I’m ok with people being gay. Not sure it’s necessarily a wonderful thing but then neither is being heterosexual half the time.

Whether it needs to be part of a game about fighting and breeding I don’t know. I think the natural restriction of only being able to breed females with males needs to stay in the gameplay or it will lose a whole dimension – I think that having sexuality as yet another restriction would make things frustrating. so the alternative is that the player decides, when it suits them, who is gay and who isn’t. The problem with that is that you want your best heroes to breed… So the ones that are a bit crappy end up being the gay ones… I’m not sure that’s fostering the right attitude either.

why would you use this as an excuse to try and spread your obvious prejudice of Americans. You really think people in other countries don’t feel as strongly about these sorts of things? What a fucking joke.

Because I think it’s symptomatic of the kind of ultra polarized way in which social issues seem exclusively to be debated in America. No common ground is ever found when each side is a militantly stubborn as the other and a “with me or against me” attitude prevails. No progress is ever made on issues such as gay marriage, abortion, gun control, or the teaching of creationism/evolution in schools. This is the way it goes on the internet because English speaking internet culture is overwhelmingly influenced by America.

Don’t get me wrong, I think America is great, It’s the political culture that makes me want to claw my own eyeballs out, especially the way it’s reflected in mass media, mass entertainment and social media.

Assuming you live in the USA, you might be interested to know that, just as homosexuality is “abnormal” in the sense that a majority of people are not homosexual, your bigotry is now also “abnormal,” as recent polls indicate that a majority of Americans support marriage rights for homosexuals.

~40% of Americans also believe that at least 25% of the US population is gay according to recent polls since they are so relatively overrepresented in media while the reality is somewhere below 2%: link to theatlantic.com
So I guess that just makes them stupid?

As far as gameplay go, obviously there wouldn’t be any sort of genetic passing along. Unless they go the “Magic!” and/or “Science!” route and work in genetics to an offspring that way.

The other option would be to build in a parenting mechanic. So how the baby is raised by the parents is as influential as its genetics. Which could be a very interesting, and true-to-life mechanic.

Is the child pampered? Do they take family vacations to the beach? Do the parents fight? Is Dad1 a stay-at-home-dad and Dad2 the breadwinner? Or do they both work? Is the child spanked as punishment or told to stand in the corner? Do they order out generally, instead of cooking?

All kinds of influences could be exerted on the child during its rearing to give it traits, bonuses and negatives that have nothing to do with its genetics. And it would be a new gameplay system I don’t think I’ve seen in games before.

As far as gameplay go, obviously there wouldn’t be any sort of genetic passing along. Unless they go the “Magic!” and/or “Science!” route and work in genetics to an offspring that way.
Simple. You pick one of the partners to be the biological parent and a surrogate mother/sperm donor from a list of candidates.

Of course, the better solution would be that you consider the traits to be a result of nurture rather than nature, as this avoids any nasty eugenics like implications.

That nurture over nature would also completely undermine a core concept of the game. From what I understand it’s supposed to be all about forced marriages and eugenics. Which is fine in a cartoony little fantasy game.
Now to throw the whole thing out the window because of political correctness is just evil.

Ah yes, the evils of “political correctness.” Also known as “WAAAAA! I don’t get to be a dick about things with no consequences anymore!”

Seriously, if (for example) my garbageman wants to be called a sanitation engineer, I’m okay with that. Shit, I’ll call him “Zogg, God-King of Bergwiesenstrasse” if he wants me to, because not only do I not want to drive my own trash to the dump, *I don’t even fucking know where the dump is*.

I think it doesn’t hurt and I’m sure double fine can implement such a feature gracefully. What I find odd is that it’s a game about lineage where you are the king, so it would seem that all marriages in it are forced. So having only forced marriages is not an issue as long as they can be gay.

Also: Will the game allow me to marry for instance two heterosexual men against their will?

I’m a gay male, though I’m 100% in favor of straight people having the same exact rights as gay people (I even have some married straight friends). However, in the context of this video game, I think straight marriage doesn’t make much sense. Let me point out some evidence:

First, scientific evidence. Despite what other people in the comments seem to think, scientific researchers have failed to discover discover any genetic predisposition to being good at casting spells, being a sneaky thief or a dragon slayer. So, there is really no intrensic reason why an adopted child should not have the same capacities as a natural child.

Second, historical/mythical evidence. A lot, if not most famous heroes were in some sort of gay couple. Achilles and Patroclus, David and Jonathan, Roland and Oliver… and don’t get me started on the Three Musketeers. Note that these are couple of heroes, where both men fight together. It is true that there are also in history or litterature heroes who are in straight couples, but in almost all of these cases only the man fights baddies, while the woman waits safely, or is captured, or does whatever nonheroic stuff she does. So if there are couples of heroes in this game, who fight together and so on, it would make much more historical sense to restrict them to gay men couples, or maybe also lesbian couples (for inclusiveness).

Third, common sense evidence. Let’s say Sailor Moon and Conan have a baby. Of course, together they can educate her or him to be a fine warrior or magic girl. But now imagine Sailor Moon and Sailor Mars have a baby together, and please remember there is no genetic predisposition to being a magic girl (see point 1). Then it seems very natural that they can raise and educate the child to be a magic girl TWICE AS WELL as Sailor Moon and Conan, who himself doesn’t know much about all this magic girl nonsense.

I mean no disrespect in this question, but could you explain the whole David/Jonathan couple thing? Because as a Christian who’s read that part in the Bible a few times, I don’t remember it saying them being a couple, just close friends. Seriously, no disrespect meant in this comment, just honestly trying to find where you’re coming from with the comment. :)

“Now it came about when he had finished speaking to Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as himself. Saul took him that day and did not let him return to his father’s house. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself.”

So we have a transfer of an individual from one household to another, some kind of spiritual union, and a loving relationship.

Other parts of the story hint at something more, too: Saul doesn’t like the relationship at first, and Jonathan runs away from home at one point to be with David. It’s all very… dramatic.

Hm, interesting. It’s obvious we’ve both interpreted that verse quite differently. :P I read it more as they had a very close, loving friendship, not a sexual relationship. Also, I thought it was stated that Saul hated David because he was jealous of him, with him being all awesome and a good soldier and the public liking David more than Saul. Anyways, we’re probably not going to change each other’s opinion, but thanks for the response! It’s always interesting hearing others opinions. :)

You’re trying to find deeper meaning in paragraph of a collection of books written by 66 different authors, those 66 authors lived hundreds to thousands of years after the events they describe. They wrote the books in various different languages, mostly greek, aramaic & hebrew and each person had a different motivation for writing the book, but almost universally they were motivated by the need to send a message. Those 66 books were cherry picked by the council of carthage under the supervision of the Bishop of Carthage, North Africa, and the Western Roman Emperor, Flavius Honorius, the decrees being later approved by the Pope. Over 500 books were not selected to make up the bible, because those books describe christianity in a way that this 2nd century council, supervised by the most powerful and corrupt political entities in europe didn’t approve of the version of christianity they sold.

These books were translated into latin. 800 years later, this manuscript was translated into english, funded by John Wycliffe, a political and religious activist but 200 years later, King James decided to have the bible rewritten and reinterpreted because the bishops bible and the others in use were undermining his authority. Thus the King James bible was born (Translated from the latin, not the originals)

So in the book of Samuel 1:26, what was written? Who the hell knows, you’d need a really good ancient hebrew – english translator with a deep understanding on the politics of the time when Samuel wrote about David and Jonathan as it reads something like this “כו וַתֹּאמֶר בִּי אֲדֹנִי, חֵי נַפְשְׁךָ אֲדֹנִי; אֲנִי הָאִשָּׁה הַנִּצֶּבֶת עִמְּכָה בָּזֶה, לְהִתְפַּלֵּל, אֶל-יְהוָה” The english translations are too biased, especially the King James. And even then, it was written in the 6th century, describing events 600 years earlier, drawn from handed down folk tales.

You’re asking about a practical detail in a game about fantasy kingdoms fighting demons over the course of generations? Have some imagination…

Magically spawn babies from the two males/females. Adoption. Illegitimate children. There’s many ways around it, and they could actually provide interesting gameplay mechanics. Imagine for instance that the game modelled inbreeding, such that generations would gain in certain attributes but at the cost of others, eventually becoming too imbalanced to work properly. Adoption would be a way to “reset” the states by bringing fresh genes into the pool. Illegitimate children would be a gamble to bring in new genes while not losing all of your accumulated ones, but at the possible risk of having a heir with none of the good genes.

You seriously need to stop for a second and think about gameplay mechanics and the world they’re building instead of transposing the issue into a world of your own fabrication where the issue is exacerbated just the way you like it.

What about single parents? Why do I have to marry or live together with someone to raise a child (especially an orphan)?

I have to say allowing the option for same-sex couples in this game (where coupling seemed to be mainly about creating offspring, which is biologically more difficult for same-sex couples) and then going “well they can contribute differently” is somewhat awkward. Why do I have to marry to become a researcher?

Maybe introducing marriage/coupling into the game was a bad idea from the very start. Take it away now, however, and the game loses one of it’s supporting pillars. I’m curious about how they’re gonna save this ship from sinking (without ridiculous cop-outs like “hey you’re gay, but because you’re just as worthy you can become an alchemist!”).

EDIT: Maybe what MobileAssaultDuck said above is a useful way to have it. Make it High Fantasy ™ and off we go :)

Yeah, that definitely seems like a fair point – I don’t see why the only development path for retired heroes should be as part of a couple.

Expanding the retirement paths to include things like research or training sounds like a good idea, at which point those paths should be open to all characters based on their abilities, rather than worrying about whether or not they’re married, or who to.

And yeah, don’t see a problem with allowing single parents, adoption, etc. – all adds to the variety. Although I guess it might end up getting a bit complicated.

I think from a gameplay perspective the ability to have single parents raise a family would allow the mechanic to be used so that twice as many children could be produced than if the parents were to marry off, which would defeat the purpose of having people marry.

It could be a tradeoff – a single hero bringing up a new hero would create a new hero with half random skills and half the parent hero’s skills, plus a bit extra; if you use a couple, it’ll be half of each plus some extra.

Why does the game have to incorporate gay marriage?
I’m 100% in favor of gay people having the same exact rights as straight people. In real life.
I’m French and the issue of same sex marriage has been a huge issue around here this last year, and I completely supported it (and the law is now passed, hooray!)

However, I don’t see a problem when, in the universe of a video game, gay marriage is not allowed. In the context of a medieval game, it makes sense. And if one of the core game mechanics is having married couples giving birth, then it’s logical that the lore of the game serves it.

It seems to me that they had a well thought-out game mechanic, that they see themselves having to change not to alienate a small part of their player base.

Keep in mind that this is my view as a straight person who plays video games. I would be more than happy for anyone to criticize my views and tell me why I’m wrong, as long as it remains polite.

(The wording of this message may be a little off at places, as I’m not a native speaker of English. Sorry if it can be confusing.)

Fantasy tends to set itself at a medieval technology level; presumably because it makes the magical elements stand out more when there isn’t technology capable of performing similar feats.

However, there is nothing inherent about a medieval technology level that requires a lack of acceptance of homosexuality; medieval Europe was heavily influenced by Christianity in which homosexuality was considered a sin, but in a fantasy universe with a completely different theological background this does not necessarily hold true.

I kind of agree, I think if you’re going to include gay marriage and gay relationships in a game, then the fiction needs to be adapted to fit that, a medieval-style society that incorporates open homosexuality would be a rather different one than most depictions and would have knock-on effects that are worth exploring.

But, I guess we’ll have to wait and see how Massive Chalice’s fiction works out, it might not be in-depth enough to warrant that explanation.

I made this same arguement when they announced same sex marriage in Skyrim, happy that gay people felt included, but I felt they undermined the TES fiction by retconning it in and not giving it any effect or even mention in the game beyond the (rather weak) marriage aspect (I was also branded a homophobe by someone on the forum for this view!).

You’re right, but I still think that this is an issue dealt with in a quite cowardly way in general in gaming. For example if it’s there as an option in a (I’m mostly thinking fantasy, or medieval-esque) game to be gay or have a gay relationship there’s usually no acknowledgement of the presence of gay people in the world, outside very specific and often generic interactions between the PC and an NPC, that are the same regardless of genders involved.

If they want to deal with it properly and give it context in the world that’s fine, and if the game lives more in mechanics than any kind of encompassing fiction that’s also fine by me. But if it’s just there as a tacked, in everyone can do anything with anyone option with no context or cause and effect, I’m not sure that’s desirable.

Yeah fair points. It makes it kind of hollow when your gender, race or sexuality has about as much impact on the game world as your characters hair style.

That’s why I think it’d be genuinely interesting if they made this work. Raising foster children or having surrogate parents maybe? I like the idea of balancing genetic traits and passing on knowledge through teaching.

But it’s so early we don’t really know how deep they planned on going into the bloodlines thing.

As a bit of a TES lore nerd, there’s actually an awful lot of precedence for same-sex relationships, particularly noticable in Morrowind, so it’s hardly a retcon. I’m pretty sure Skyrim is the first game where marriage is an option for the player character, so it doesn’t seem unreasonable that same-sex partners are OK.

He is a mafia hitman. Hard ass, brutal, very macho. He kills people, dresses like you’d expect a macho Italian male to dress, yet he’s married to a dude. The only time you ever realize he’s gay is watching him interact with his husband. Other than that, the man’s sexuality is an unknown if you judge him only by his personality.

That is how most gay people actually are. Just like straight people, they just love people of the same gender.

This is true, but I’m more interested in the idea of a society that has an open and tolerant attitude to homosexuality and how this would mean it develops and changes as a consequence to that – I was not talking about like, having flamboyantly fabolous stereotypes of gay people mincing around or anything. Furthermore considering the ways in which an integrated society would differ from a ‘typical’ medieval or fantasy-based-on-medieval society where Homoesexuality was frowned upon, or treated as unholy etc.

Edit – Homeosexuality is where people like having sex with placebos, or a typo – you decide.

Rulers can/could get away with anything, because they’re rulers. The idea that homosexuality was accepted and ignored in Medieval times is quite prevalent and is frankly not substantiated by historical fact. A 5 second google search shows a host of evidence of persecution and death for homosexuals (especially male homosexuals). Just because there are prominent figures who were rumoured or reported to be gay in positions of power and not killed (fun fact! – I’m directly descended from one of them – Edward II) , doesn’t mean that same was true for everyone else.

The sad thing is, while you seem to be making fun of it, I think such sexuality should actually also be represented if you decide to incorporate gay couples. Either have it “classic pseudo-medieval” and leave gay marriage out or put everything in.

Why? Transgendered people are basically just people who identify as another gender. So simply by allowing the player to choose which gender to play as, wouldn’t they be inclusive to transgendered people?

I don’t know. We’d have to ask trans-people whether they’d be okay with it. From what I hear from their community, they might actually be demanding.

Also, being a “classic” gay man and having a relationship with another man might not be the same thing as being a trans-man and living with a man. Is trans-man even the correct expression nowadays? I always get confused with the directions of transit.
Okay, I’ll admit, now I’m making fun of it, too. However, this is a serious subject, and my view remains “Wer A sagt, muss auch B sagen”, so if you start on the topic and insert certain elements, you have to cover them all.

Maybe add a different use or bonus for gay married characters such that its a great when a kid comes out and has that trait it is a pleasant variation. Possibly the gay couple can have higher stat growth since they don’t have children and can focus on combat rather than raising kids, say an unmarried char would get no couple bonus and not have as high stat growth.

But then there is alway magical offspring generation and the like, heck just have male female couples use the same system since they are more concerned with making uber heros.

With no information on the game structure it is hard to think of good suggestions.

While I’m all for gay rights and even have a few gay friends, I strongly oppose the inclusion of gay marriage in this game, since I don’t want to have the issue forced upon me. Why must gay people insist on having their lifestyle choice portrayed in games and other media? This is a game where people have swords and armors, so obviously it’s meant to be set in the european middle ages, a time when there was no gay marriage, so I don’t see, why it should be included here. Some might argue that there are probably a million other little details about the game’s world that have nothing to do with a medieval setting, but I chose to oppose this point.

Then it is a poor justification, arguing for the inclusion of something in a fictional game because it exists in reality is possible from an immersion point of view, but obviously shaky.

On the other hand, since a game is entertainment, designed to entertain, the argument for including things because it will make the game better for players is pretty strong. Since there are clearly players for whom that feature is important and since it will not negatively impact anyone else’s experience of the game, it’s hard to see how such an argument can be refuted.

(If the knowledge that somewhere in this fictional gaming world gay people are doing gay things does negatively impact a person’s experience of a game, then that person is indeed a homophobe)

And don’t forget: Women never fought, as is historical FACT that I don’t even need to show sources to claim, and as such every portrayal of fighting women is absolutely a sign of rising misandry in games, and we shall not have such nonsense!

The comment being replied to referred to medieval Europe. There might have been some women who fought in that time period and location, but they were very much in the minority and it was generally frowned upon

It might be more like the Sims. You just steer your character into a relationship with whoever you see fit. God, its been in the biggest mainstream PC game ever and still people get up in arms about it.

Moreover, don’t look into the mirror. Not too long, anyway. That would be two people of the same sex and gender staring at each other in intimate spaces, and as Russia recently declared, seeing such an image will likely enable homosexual tendencies. Can’t have that if such logical reasoning supports it!

They have to “insist” because as shown by Brad Muir they get ignored by default. It’s the very nature of privilege that you just assume this game has to be exclusively hetro and anything else is an imposition.

Well bollocks to that. It’s a game, and a fantasy, in the early stages of development. Having gay marriage where you can foster children and pass on your traits with nurture rather than nature works perfectly well. It’s more variety, and more inclusive.

If you don’t like the issue being forced on you then you don’t have to play the game. It really is that simple.

I somewhat see your point. I fail to see why so many homosexual people feel the need to scream from the rooftops about their choice. Doing so only makes their lifestyle seem more of a cry for attention than an actual heartfelt decision. But those are the exception not the rule. My next door neighbors are 2 gay men and they are raising a little boy who had been abused. Great men whom I love dearly and that boy means the world to me. They are both Christan men and go to church regularly and make no outward claims or statements about their lifestyle. They simply live life with no need to explain their choices because, quite frankly, it’s no ones business.

What protestation are you referring to exactly? I could care less if you had a love affair with a tent pole and demanded equal rights. I honestly just don’t care because it isn’t my business. Stay out of mine and I promise I will stay out of yours.

They have to scream from the rooftops because otherwise they get ignored, which is kind of the point of this article.

It’s easy for us to say “just live your life, I don’t care” but we live in a society where our point of view is already the default. We don’t have to put any effort into being represented. Gay people have to fight to be noticed because the media won’t do it for them.

And why is it OK for us to enjoy dramas and stories about hetro relationships, but wag our finger at gay people that want the same? Trying to wave it away as being inappropriate for a game that is clearly fantasy is so cowardly.

Yeah it’s not like a sad old bloke shot himself in Europe’s, or arguably the world’s, most famous church or anything, and the nation’s Nazi party took that as a chance to jump in and stage protests against Dem Gays getting able to enter a publicly certified union of love and equal support.

I’m from Germany and our minister of foreign affairs is openly gay for fucks sake, as is the Mayor (and Minister-president, head of state) of Berlin (which is a federal state). Show me a openly gay Minister, Governor, President etc. in the USA.

That still doesn’t excuse anything. I mean, I’m currently residing IN the same country IN the very city ruled by His Majesty Klaus II of Berlin, and his being homosexual is still dragged out as some curious thing, rather than just being him, if the occasion arises. Until that ends, until that isn’t an attitude the Biggest Newspaper can just throw around wildly… Until that point, one can’t really declare that “people are over it” or something.

I mean, seriously, TODAY was the day that the Constitutional Court had to amend the civil partnership laws to be equal to marriage. This isn’t the end step for equality, far from it.

(There is quite the number of people if you just go to the search engine of your choice and enter “openly gay senators”, for that matter.)

And yet we still have major parts of the ruling party CDU/CSU vehemently opposing gay marriage (though they got dealt a blow by the constitutional court yet again today). We also have influential members of the churches, though mostly the catholic church, openly spreading prejudice and hatred of homosexuality. It’s a bit naive to already get on a high horse just because there are a few openly homosexual politicians.

It’s easier for something to be ignored or hated or looked down upon when it’s not exposed in the media and in everyday life. Like the first time I (a gay male) saw two guys kiss on TV I was all “woah that looks weird!” but clearly now it’s just a kiss. Exposure eventually encourages acceptance.

Anyway, it’s kind of irrelevant. It’s nice that they are doing it. They can do what they want with the game. And why the hell shouldn’t they do something nice?

Yeah, until ca. the mid-16th century, a marriage simply consisted of two people agreeing to be married, and no particular ceremony or even witnesses were required. So in theory, I don’t see any reason why two gay people couldn’t just make such an agreement and for all intents and purposes be married.

But in the context of rulers in medieval history there was no possibility whatsoever for a gay marriage.

Just try to imagine Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor, son to Otto I, the great, Defender of Christendom, refusing to marry Theophanu, Byzantine Princess with the words: “meh, Dad i told you I’m not into dudes! You never listen to me… *sniff* I don’t like those Byzanitines and your shitty alliance anyway…”

Fair enough. Doesn’t really seem too important to me – especially not when one of the fundamental aspects of the game is in creating strong bloodlines by passing down the genes of one set of mighty warriors to a new generation – but that’s probably just the “hetero privilege” talking. Don’t see why gay couples would have to ‘contribute’ in some way, either – in the same manner, if they want to keep it ‘realistic’, not all hetero couples would be able to conceive children.

Somehow, adopting a random kid doesn’t really seem to match the whole bloodline concept. Unless adopted children would have entirely different base stats, or something. (Can see this easily spiralling into a ‘nature versus nurture’ debate). They could still pass down some bitchin’ weapons, though.

Adopted kids would be in the position to receive a lot of training and experience from their parents, even if they don’t share the same genes. So, while they might be more different from their parents than biological kids, they will be more similar to them than the kid next door.

Yeah, I agree. Certainly not saying they wouldn’t get some benefits from their bad-ass warrior parents, but in the same way, they wouldn’t get the genetic benefits (or flaws) from them.

On the same topic, I don’t see why hetero couples wouldn’t be able to adopt, either. And I don’t see why a married couple would have to even want to conceive children, if we’re not approaching it from a purely systematic perspective. (We’re probably overthinking this).

Well, maybe we are, but if multi-generational play is one of the main pillars of the game, we have to discuss it. And I really have to say, if that is to be one focus of the game, they better make it diverse.

You could let characters have children while they’re still adventuring – and then let retired characters foster them. Which could let you keep the characters with the best genes fighting for longer, but still pass on those genes – and even if they get killed, their kids still get raised.

Plus it increases your options in other ways – maybe one couple have good stats they can pass on to kids they conceive, but another couple is smarter and will impart better skills in any child they raise.

Maybe you could have civ-style ‘civics’ to chose from? Allow cooperative child-raising, or limit it to couples? Allow gay marriage or keep everything strictly hetero?

Hmm, nice ideas. The initial vibe I got from the project is that, after your heroes reached a certain age or whatever, they’d be “put out to pasture”; couple up, settle down, y’know. But allowing their children to be raised by others while continuing to fight…that’s an interesting concept. Especially with the different potential stats and bonuses that can be conferred, as you suggested.

I get a feeling that this could all get rather too complicated in the end, though. Perhaps they would have been more sensible to just stick to “straight couples settle down, have kids, kids are raised by their parents and carry on their bloodline” aspect, rather than getting bogged down in all these different strands of possibilities. Still, I guess everything’s all on the drawing board at this stage.

Well, the interesting part isn’t really the bloodlines anyway. It’s creating a legacy. Bloodlines can be an aspect of that but, let’s face it, they’re a pretty lame one. Maybe if you want to breed a race horse or something it would matter but heroism is about so much more than that.

It’s not just about being able to swing a sword that bit harder than the next guy. (Although if it was then regular exercise and a decent diet would both be more reliable ways to achieve that.) Heroism is about determination, heart and courage and rising above your circumstances, not just winning some genetic lottery ticket.

People can leave a mark on the world in far more ways than just genetic material. It’s what you represent, what you inspire in others, what you prepare for and what you teach to name just a few. All things that can be done by people of any sexuality, gender or age. With a little thought I think those could all be turned into far more interesting gameplay choices than simply “Have two really tough people get married so their kids get more hit-points.”

Just going along with the way things have always been done is not the way to make good art or good craft. Embracing challenges and finding new ways not only makes games more welcoming for some, it also makes for better games.

1. I never said they were exactly the same. One is the love between one man and another man, the other a man and his horse. Clear difference.
2. How discriminatively of you.
3. What if it was a talking horse?
-b. What if it wasn’t an animal but a beast’wo/’man, where’s the equal representation for furries!

I’m highly liberal, and pro gay marriage in real life, but I have to say, why is this a thing? To me a semi realistic European medieval era fantasy setting should include such things potentially buggery/manlove (for example Ice and Fire series/GOT) but correct me if I’m wrong but I think that gay marriage would have been impossible.

I realise this is a game, and not closely modelled on reality either, but I feel that games such as Crusader Kings 2 take a much more mature and realistic model. I guess I was hoping for a game which was a hodge podge of CK2 (Dynasty Sim) and Xcom with an Ice and Fire feeling too it. Its a bit hard to have a dynasty if your bloodline stops reproducing because of orientation right? Would seem to be a potential lose state to me.

I’m sorry I realise that I wasn’t clear or as eloquent as I could be, its been a tough morning.

My point was that I was hoping for CK2 + Xcom crossbreed. This makes it sound like its not enough CK2 for me. Thus I’m backing something that I’m not sure I’m as interested in enough anymore, and I might pull out of backing the project. But then that seems extreme and bigoted especially if its optional. The idea of cancelling my backing because it includes homosexual relationships isn’t really me as I’m “liberal” and pro gay marriage but at the same time I don’t see how spending development time adding homosexual relations and consequences will add to the experience I was hoping for.

If it does, then I’ll be happily proven wrong. But its how it impacts the gameplay mechanics that I’m concerned about/interested in. Nothing further.

IE I would like to know more, as this seems vague and potentially game breaking.

Or maybe you’re being aggressive and accusatory without good reason. Really, just because someone doesn’t like something in one context jumping to “homophobic” as a retort is easy and really rather lame. Especially in this instance, as I tried to qualify that I’m not homophobic, however I was concerned about how this could work mechanically in a way I’d find enjoyable in a game.

I hope it does, which is why I kept my pledge, but colour me sceptical at the moment.

That said I must admit, I did have a moment when I asked myself “maybe I’m getting old as I even question this”.

It doesn’t really matter too much how it works, because as Brad said, it’s entirely optional. It’s also pretty silly to claim that this is going to eat up some huge amount of development resources. Most of those are going into *making the game into a thing that works*. Indeed, since this is being included at the start of the design process, and also is responsible for a certain amount of extra backing-money just on its own, it arguably doesn’t use any ‘extra’ resources at all.

That’s besides the fact that it offers some interesting possibilities — more options on how you raise your children. And it’s not like they’re removing man+woman parenting; indeed, it’s surely going to be the case in all but a small, and optional, subset of pairings at most.

This is why these arguments that “oh, how could this possibly fit in as part of the game! It’s going to capsize the whole project! I have to pull out for purely mechanical reasons! Definitely not because this issue makes me uncomfortable!” come across a little, shall we say, disingenuous.

I thought it was really cool how the RPS post says this kickstarted a discussion about the inheritance mechanic and the role of retired heros. Brad Muir is into systems that stimulate players to compose their own narratives. His solution will be something systematic and, hopefully, fun. I bet you it will be.

Nah, on average we gay men try out this sex malarky way more often than you guys and it has been noticed that it doesn’t result in kids. This makes some of us sad and others jump for joy. But we’re usually not surprised when someone points out this fact :)

Your understanding would be wrong. All sorts of shenanigans went on even in the high age of medieval dynasties that made it much more complicated than that, even to the people involved. And now, looking back from the vantage point of the modern day, we can see that in fact everything important – the ‘quality’ and ‘nobility’ of the members of a given family – was mostly or entirely to do with upbringing and social status/privelege. There’s no such thing as ‘royal genes’ or ‘noble genes’.

Not that it’s important how the medieval nobility felt about bloodline inheritance. They believed a lot of fucked up things about women and foreigners and heretics as well but there’s no need to include them in the game and attribute them to people that you’re trying to portray as heroic.

Nice of them to think about it. I don’t really get the vocal need of different minorities to be represented in videogames or other works of fiction, but hey, it’s 21st century. Being gay is like preferring your coffee black – no reason for some imaginary characters in fantasyland not to.

arguing that its doesn’t seem to fit in the game or that it seems unnecessary, or that it seems to be included just for the sake of it(to pander to a part of the audience) is not homophobia. This is a problem we cant seem to disagree without being labeled as such and therefore stifles any real debate since these supposedly “open minded” people seem so intent of pretending there’s no other possible reason to think its unnecessary other than you must hate gay people.

Liberals, claim they are open to different points of view but are then shocked and appalled to find out there are different points of view.

I have no hate towards gay people I dont care what someone does in their personal life but I find it hard to see any real reason to include this other than they dont wanna piss people off by saying “no” which would undoubtedly lead to (baseless)accusations of homophobia as evidenced by the responses here in the comment section on people saying the same thing.

And even if I’m against “gay marriages” for philosophical and sociological reasons it doesn’t mean I hate anybody. Calling me a hater or a homophobe is just an easy way for somebody to justify to oneself not feeling the need to understand my standpoint.

my dictionary defines homophobia as “irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals”. Just as not allowing interracial couples to marry represents discrimination, so does not allowing homosexuals to marry. Therefore you exhibit homophobia, homophobe.

The argument that it doesn’t fit is a bit tricky, since all we know is it’s in a fictional setting with magic and stuff, and unless Brad Muir is fibbing, it’s not pandering to the audience if they bring up an issue you hadn’t even considered.

I’ve not seen people making a case for it not being in the game, other than cost (which may well make sense commercially, but in these cases it’s always going to be the representations of people outside the main target audience that get ignored), or that they just don’t like it being a thing in the game.

I try to be open to other points of view, but decrying a game because it lets other people play a character who is A Gay is not a point of view, it’s a problem.

Oh if they can implement it without it affecting their original design intentions that’s fine. Maybe they did just over look it or maybe they now feel pressured to add it. who knows but its annoying being labeled as a homophobe just for posing a question. Or asking why its so important for it to be included when it seems pretty trivial to someone like me. If the game is good i’ll buy it for sure no matter what. I just get tired of the liberal “if you don’t agree with me your the enemy and a horrible person” mentality that’s pretty prevalent on these types of issues.

Thing is, you don’t see people in other articles wondering aloud why more things are being put into a game, especially when those same people call those things ‘trivial.’

Why is it only these articles where people ask for less in their games?

And for that matter why even bother questioning it if you have no state-able objection in the first place? Because the only actual argument I’ve seen against the inclusion of more diverse relationships is “they said bloodlines. That means genes” and we all know that’s complete bullshit, so… looks like a duck, talks like a duck.

Seems like there is potential to jeopardise one of the core mechanics of the game if this is included. Treat the issue like any other design consideration: does the inclusion of this add to the game, or does it detract from it in some way?

The point here seems to be that there aren’t any core mechanics yet. Your hypothetical question is a useful one, and if diversifying the possible mating configurations presents new and interesting choices, this could well be a net positive from a game design perspective.

Besides, all non-abstract game design is a political statement; it’s fairly important to make sure that your statements reflect your actual positions. It sounds like Muir’s initial statement did not reflect his viewpoint, so he is absolutely right to think about a way to express himself more accurately.

Considering that the focus doesn’t lie on the actual act but on family stuff, which way you like to have sex shouldn’t be as much concern as with whom you’d like to have sex, so your sarcastic remarks don’t actually apply here.

Damn you Double Fine, I was trying so hard ti not back this game, even though the idea sounds really good. Then you have to ruin it be being all inclusive and reasonable, even though I’ve already spent way too much money on kickstarters.

First thought: uuugh feature creep from community suggestions. It’d be fine if they just handwave it, make objects with the same gender variable able to marry and produce babies, and leave it there without any expensive and bloated feature creep that the research and fostering comments smack of.

I wonder if orientation will be taken into consideration, with marriage being completely selfish, or pairings will be altruistic and only for the biological benefits given to the children. The first could be weird if they make the population 50/50 straight/gay in the name of equality. I wouldn’t mind the second, it would be a good parallel to the time-honoured act of marrying off royal daughters for political gain.

It’s a game, so ultimately this marriage/partnering thing is just a gameplay mechanic. Given that character gender rarely ever has an effect on gameplay mechanics, I don’t see why this should be any different.

If they want to ‘tackle the issue’ they could make it a storyline that’s triggered if you have a same-sex marriage, but it sounds like they want it to be purely functional.

I have no problem with gay marriage in real life, but for some reason I’m so angry about this, that I will still add one more comment to the several dozen above, to eloquently disagree with how this gameplay choice is clashing with the context of the universe that we have already gotten so familiar with in a 6 minute long pitch video, half of which was Tim Schafer goofing around.

Can’t they see how this will completely ruin the carefully balanced mechanics that have already been developed? This game that I’ve never played, or hasn’t even been brought into existence will be unplayable. Unplayable!

That’s awesome, good on them. If we make a concious decision about it now, it might become standard in the future. Hopefully one day excluding same-sex couples from family options will be just as strange as making a medieval game without swords.

And the whole bloodlines concept can be adapted easily. Make it about nurture instead of nature, nobody can tell the difference and all the adopted children can inhered awesome ancestor powers. Everyone wins!

Lovely to hear! And to all those folks complaining (in reasonable, non-swivelling-eyes-fashion) about it being ‘unrealistic’ – this is a fantasy game, yes? And even if it was historical in bent, most of human history has been gay as a window. Certainly you don’t read much of it in the medieval period, but it certainly existed – sure, usually we hear about it being used to slander or provide basis for usurption, but clearly it’s a natural urge that’s always been there. History can be incredibly surprising – and the spending a little time in the deeper ends of historical literature concerning the Medieval and Middle Ages can really put the lie to some broadly accepted historical ‘truths’.

Why’s everyone getting so fussed about the realism of this? Our modern concepts of marriage and the family are pretty much all post-industrial constructs, back in the day it was mostly rich people’s property laws anyway, and guys fucked guys constantly. It wasn’t even considered gay, cause ‘gay’ is another concept that couldn’t exist without our contemporary heteronormative emphasis and obsession with the nuclear family. It’d be more realistic if there was no magic, and as a knight, you were an inbred nobleman who mostly just organised mercenary armies to fight for you, were massively racist and sexist, and had sex with everything in your path.
But sadly my pitch for Sir Dicklord Hatecrime: Magicless Awfuldoer was rejected by Doublefine, even though I changed my name by deedpoll to ‘google Dicklord Hatecrime’ as a viral marketing push

So they don’t have any design or prototype to show, just vague videos with promises and crowsourced design, but we do know for a fact that gay marriage would be in. Good. Focusing on the important stuff. Can we also have the racial discussion in it too? I am a Latino man and find this game largely misrepresenting my kind. Also, tackling on the bully problem in our schools. And social violence happening in my country.

In a more constructive way, how would you tackle the problem of same-sex couples not being able to easily produce biological children? How would you incorporate other forms of sexuality apart from hetero and homo? And what about other human properties such as race or handicaps? How does a disabled person fit in with a game of fantasy heroes?

I am totally in favour of putting all of this in. However, given time and money limitations, where do you draw the line?

At the point where putting it in would considerably upset the gameplay balance or require putting in massive amounts of work. Remember: This game isn’t a hardcore porn simulator, so it should be possible to leave most of the explanations up to your imagination.

At an arbitrary point. Where all lines in development of all features in all games are ultimately drawn. I’m sure FPS games devs would love full immersion VR with bullet impact and photorealistic graphics and sentient-level AI and witty squad banter. But it’s not possible in the budget or time scale so they draw the line at a wholly arbitrary point and then try and do better next time. It’s really that simple.

I mean, I get what -you’re- saying and please don’t interpret this as an attack, but it really is a common problem with a simple solution, and overthinking it just isn’t going to leave anybody happy at the end of the day, so all we can do is not, and work step by step towards better games for everyone.

They adopt the second/third/whatever child of a relative, giving them the chance of inheriting a family title. That child’s bloodline is part the hero who’s brother it was, part random second parent. Stats are the modified based on the training the parent who isn’t directly related gives them

Well, there’s an equal amount of, ‘You are not in favour so I’ll heavily imply you’re homophobic for no reason at all’ posts, so it kind of cancels out I guess. Stupidity generally doesn’t take sides, good nor bad.

Just to be clear, I agree the ‘realism’ argument is silly (imo it is pretty much silly for any game), but there’s still a reason people find some fantasy believable and other types not. If the people in the game are human I don’t think having gay couples make babies will work very well for this reason and I’m pretty sure Double Fine will agree. We’ll see what they come up with, maybe it’ll be awesome, but I find the fact that this is discussed at all a bad sign for gay rights. It is such a non-issue for the game and this kind of peer pressure generally doesn’t have positive effects in the end according to my experience. It won’t fix any prejudices, it’ll only create animosity without any net positive effect besides feeling righteous.

If, as a gay or hetero, you really feel strongly about the inclusion of gay marriage at this point (the fact that hardly anything is known about the game is equally true for you), I think you should reconsider your priorities. As others have pointed out, we are not having this discussion for any other types of marriages (no harems, shameful!), this is a clear indication we are not really discussing the game here…

You probably read that word and think something else, let me explain what is meant by privilege in this case.

I am a straight, white, male. I have never had racism committed against me, I have never been attacked over my sexuality, and though a loud minority of female supremecists have derided by gender, my social status has never been eroded as a male.

I am a writer. Until being awakened to the concept of privilege, I wrote like a straight, white, male. I had no problem with anyone else, I’ve always been fairly liberal, but I never considered that my writing had nothing for them. No strong characters who weren’t white, straight, and male.

I wasn’t writing any characters that were automatically bad due to being non-white, non-male, or non-straight, but I wasn’t writing any strong characters for anyone not a straight, white, male.

That’s privilege. It’s not that you’re actively doing it, it’s that the thought has never crossed your mind because of your privileged position. It’s accidental discrimination caused by no conscious fault of your own.

Once awoken to the concept, it also made me a better writer with more depth.

Don’t tell me you’re going to try and tell me men are repressed and derided for being men.

We control the world dude, always have, still do. Our demographic is losing power, yes, but we’re still above everyone in the social ladder so we’ve got a ways to fall and a ways to drag the others up before we’re equal.

Holding value in your demographic is a massive misunderstanding of how time, culture, and genetics works.

“And don’t get me started on the portrayals of straight white men in the media.”

The portrayal of straight white men in the media is overwhelmingly positive. How often in films is hero *not* white male?

Just a quite peek at what’s on at the cinema right now:
Man of steel – white male,
World War Z – white male,
Star Trek Into Darkness – white male,
Fast and Furious 6 – white male.
And those are just the films with identifiable heroes. The Hangover Part III doesn’t really feature any heroics, but is about white males.

Lets see the counter side shall we?
After Earth – black, but still male (and straight). (Will Smith – one of the comparitavely tiny number of black leads who can carry a movie on their own)
Behind the Candelabra – white males, but not straight.
The Great Gatsby – white and straight, but not all male.

While you are overall correct I want to clarify that most of the lead characters in Fast and Furious 6 are men of color. Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) is part black and part Samoan. Vin Diesel is similarly multi-ethnic, though it is somewhat telling that our movies with non-white heroes pass as white quite easily. Ludacris and Tyrese seem to be cast solely for comic relief, on the other hand. Paul Walker is uh, Paul Walker.

Make heredity traits that combine those of the parents and add to them upbringing bonus to get the final stats. Your heroes have roughly 10% chance to be gay – if you combine two of them they can adopt but the genetic feats of the kid will be random but you could put on top of them the upbringing bonus. So you could achieve some interesting heroes that way.

This way you get very interesting gameplay mechanic which is the most important thing for a game.

Surprised there’s so many people objecting to the idea of adoption as a solution to this. Why not just have them adopt their brother’s second son, the one who wouldn’t have inherited the title etc from his father? That way the bloodline continues but you have the opportunity to have the second person in the bloodline provide training as the child grows up

“Guys, in real-life, I am a a big supporter of people who make the choice to be gay. But like most PC gamers, I find games are just becoming too complex! As such, I think representing the fetish of homosexuality in the game would just make the game too confusing!

Also, gay marriage would ruin my immersion! As we all know, during the Demonic Invasion of Medieval Europe, gay people weren’t allowed to be married. In fact, I don’t think people started choosing to be gay until May 16, 1919 — when Liberace was born.

And really, if they let gay marriage in they have to include bestiality, pedophilia and vorarephilia. I mean, that’s the same thing as sexual orientation, right?

In closing, I just want to reiterate that I’m only looking out for the best of the game, and my opinion has nothing to do with the fact that I am a white heterosexual man. As I said, I fully support homosexuality in real life… I even took a pamphlet that a homo handed me outside the mall… so you know I’m all about gay rights and shit!”

The truth is that every homophobe supports same sex marriage as long as both girls are extremely hot. At least these are my observations judging by the contents of some laptop’s hard drives I have been called to rescue during the years.

Marriage and sex are not necessarily related ;) And tbh, most opposition is to male gays specifically I think. I know a few lesbians and I hardly ever hear about problems from them, although I realise anecdotal evidence is not a good thing to base opinions on.

The problem isn’t the inclusion of gay marriage, it’s the fact that yet again we see an entire article devoted to just this. Instead of simply talking about the game as a whole and inserting that somewhere as an extra bit of info. Just so we can all pat each other on the back for being progressive and roll our eyes at the ‘homophobes’.

“Sigh, I KNEW I shouldn’t have read the comments. The NERVE on some people. (did you read this guys?)”

After the brouhaha in other games about the issue, we have a short piece about how the process of kickstarter influenced design decisions in making a game, and some discussion about how it differs from the usual publishing route.

This would be interesting if it was just about the design of the hats in the game. That the issue has been controversial in the past makes it more interesting to me.

OK, so I choose to make a gay character, marry some compatible same-sex partner and acquire by whatever means a child or two to carry on the dynasty. Now are those kids going to be gay too? Do I get to choose for them too?

It may, however, be epigenomic in nature, but that is a fairly new field of genetics.

The hypothesis being that homosexuality occurs when a male or female parent passes a particular epigenomic tag to a child of the opposite sex.

Though, as I said, this is a hypothesis.

There is also a genetic hypothesis that homosexuals do have an evolutionary purpose. Homosexual males seem to often have extremely fertile mothers and sisters. It could be that whatever is making a male gay is also making females more fertile. So even though he may never pass on his genes, his mother and sister will pass on more genes than average and homosexuality persists on the matrilineal line but only is expressed in males, like hemophilia.

This would mean that what makes a male gay may be entirely different from what makes a female gay.

Not only would this make homosexuality genetic, but actually would make it a positive genetic trait. Sure, one dude doesn’t pass on any genes, but his female family members probably easily make up for his lack of offspring.

It’s not so much whether the female is twice as productive as whether the family’s children have a higher survival rate which equates to twice or more that of a family which doesn’t have any gay offspring. Since the gay individual wouldn’t have any children of his own, he would likely be open to helping care for his brothers/sisters/nieces/nephews, or at least would be available to do so. This could potentially increase their ability to survive and, as such, make the occasional gay family member beneficial evolutionary

Of course it’s all hypothetical at this point, nobody actually knows why someone is gay. Will be interesting to know the answer if they ever work it out though

Again, the homosexual individual’s presence would have to increase the chances of heterosexual offspring’s survival at least two fold in relation to offspring coming from lineages without that trait to compensate for not passing his genes. That’s ignoring the fact that if you want to propagate your genes, it’s much more efficient to have a male do it.

I’m familiar with the concept of “homestay homosexuals”. I just don’t find the concept convincing in evolutionary terms.

The homosexual individual actually wouldn’t matter in this situation. Evolution is about genes, not individuals. Though the gene has create an end point for his specific genetic code, it produces a positive selection in his female family members, causing the gene to persist.

This is also how we developed biological altruism. 10 people share a gene for self-sacrifice, but in any given situation only one must sacrifice themselves, meaning that though the gene was detrimental to that specific individual, it is a positive trait overall and continues through his/her brothers, sisters, and cousins and is positively selected by natural selection.

The individual is a total non factor in evolution, only the genes matter, which is how you end up with genetic lineages that are detrimental to the individual but positive for the whole, such as the aforementioned altruism gene.

Look, this isn’t about any individual bearer of that trait. It’s about a specific gene group producing a number of male dead ends that have to be compensated by the female over productivity. Unless the females compensate entirely for the non productive males, the gene line will not persist. And I don’t buy the assumption that they can do that unconditionally. Especially when the relative importance of male and female progeny has fluctuated greatly over the history of humans as a species.

The limiting factor for success in most genetic stocks is not primarily linked the the specific quantity of individuals that can be produced. There are, historically, many other limiting factors which exceed the reproduction rate.

The main question that arises from this in my mind is ‘Why did nobody at Double Fine think of this?”.
I mean, I don’t know how large the team is, it may only be a few people at this stage, which would make it more understandable. I can’t help thinking that there must be at least one gay person working there though.

I guess it seems understandable to me that one person could overlook something like that, but in a team over a certain size you either have minorities whose views are not heard, or you don’t have those minorities at all.

I find this pretty sad. Their game where a key mechanic is passing on your super magic genes to your progeny… now has become a gay marriage issue?

Where you have a game like Mass Effect where you had sex for the hell of a relationship and it had no consequences beyond the bounds of the lives of those characters… not allowing homosexual couples, that was naff.

But this game was fundamentally about passing on familial traits which just isn’t possible with a same sex coupling. So now part of the magic genes is going to have to be magic asexual reproduction or magic stork delivered babies or something more prosaic like adoptions. Which weakens the whole passing traits down thing they made a big deal of.

Don’t know. Just feels like a fight is being fought in the wrong area to me.

Brad talked about fostering on the forums, and how it would be a nature vs. nurture sort of thing. Basically, fostering could work by taking part of the traits from the birth parents, and then part of the traits from the people who raised the child.

Ignoring the whole gay side of things(since fostering would obviously not be restricted to gay couples)… I think it adds another layer of “genetic guidance” to the bloodline gameplay.

My feeling about this is that it’s just watering down their original vision. IF the original vision had been, you can have babies or have pot luck with adoption and allow same sex couples, or singles to use that route to get their successors… then I would have been fine with it.

It’s that the focus of the game has had to change in such a daft way for such a game… for such a silly reason.

Silly because this was a game about passing on magic genes. Not silly because I have anything against same sex couples. As I said, it feels like the fight is being fought in the wrong place here.

It shouldn’t be too difficult to create a child-rearing mechanic that passes along traits to children the similar to a parallel genetic-passing-along system would.

Throw in a surrogate parent mechanic where the genetics of only one of the hero parents is passed along, and there’s pretty much room for every permutation of human sexuality to be possible in the game. Without even needing to go the “Magic!” route (although that’s viable as well).

So the kid gets “Big and Strong” from one parent, misses out on “Wickedly Smart” from the non-genetic parent, and learns “Kicks Puppies When Angry” from his parents’ dysfunctional marriage (no reason gays should enjoy marriage any more than straights).

And with the added benefit of increasing the potential choices for the player to mull over, and complexity of the game.

Or they could just magic it up. We’re explicitly trying to create a stronger generation of heroes to save our world from demons, here. This isn’t trying to fake a claim on the next county over. Bring out the big guns.

Maaaaaaah. Topicaly political stuff again. Well it’ll generate some trafic atleast. But the Article itself is fine. Stuff did happen and they did report it and RPS would be rather bad site for news if they didn’t, would they?

The whole Massive Challice thing is based on the blood lines. I don’t see ant problems with Marriage, with hystorical accuracy or some such. Those are not the issues. The issue for me is that basic Human Biology must bow her head and leave the room cause people demand so.

Let me get this straight. The arguments so far go like this?
The game doesn’t have Gay couples. But in Real World They do egsist so The Game must have them also. OK but in real Wold Gay couples don’t have biological offsprings, so the gay Couples in the Game clash with concept. Oh then Magic it Up.

The entirely self servin choise of arguments (i need it based on reality or i need it magiced up when I SAY I need it) just means to me that someone demands atention. The catch is when someone demands attention I instinctively dislike them. And since the only other feature of the person (aside for demand for atention) is his sexual orientation they have actively worked to cement this corelation of Attention seeker+Gay+dislike for me.

You actively work to draw attention to yourself in unlikable way to make society like you more? How does that work for you?

Oh and publicity is not really good thing on its own. Its not Easy to hate something that im not aware of. Its impossible. Its possible to Ignore though I give you that.

As far as I understood the interview, the argument was:
The game doesn’t have gay couples. I’d like to give this game money if it had that option. Whoops, the designer didn’t even consider it, so now he’s looking at integrating it in some as-yet-unspecified way.

To say the solution clashes with the concept kind of assumes you know what the solution and concept are, and if it turns out to be a crap solution I’d suggest not playing as a gay character. Problem solved.

I’m a heterosexual, middle-class white male, I *never* have to “draw attention to myself” to get people to make games that even acknowledge I exist. Other people do, and for the sake of interesting games, and media in general, I’m glad there are people who will.

Hm, fair question, though perhaps that’s less commonly an aspect of games compared to some other forms of media, the common, perhaps rather clichéd, sci-fi and fantasy settings have tended to reflect an arguably middle-class sensibility – a distancing from material necessity, the hero as specialist or professional, the quest and social advancement gained through personal ability and delayed gratification.

Feel free to ignore that part of the original sentence, my case may be stronger or weaker than what I’ve been able to put here, but I lack the vocabulary and specific knowledge to make much of a case either way.

> You actively work to draw attention to yourself in unlikable way to make society like you more? How does that work for you?

YOU think it is in an unlikeable way. Considering the progress gay rights have done the last couple of decades, it would appear it is working pretty darn well. Thanks for asking.

An oppressed group can’t crawl to the oppressors, hoping to get suddenly get accepted. It was tried for decades, it wasn’t until the Stonewall riots in the 60s that people sat up and took notice. You have to stand up and make your voice heard. If that offends the bigots, shit, I’m so sorry man. No wait, I’m not.

That’s just what you do, calling people names as soon as they manifest an opinion different from yours. It is the reason I’m not surprised to see your comment, and will not be surprised if other homo-lovers jump in explaining how I am stupid/anormal/* and should think that poking smell holes is fun and should be encouraged.

It seems Nature’s is just auto regulating itself to control over population by creating homos.

We’re calling you dumb because you drop nonsensical statements like this. But if you have any kind of evidence – and I’m not talking about half-baked assumptions, but actual evidence – then go ahead and provide it. I for one will be happy to apologize for saying that you’re ill-informed and casually bigoted.

calling people names as soon as they manifest an opinion different from yours
No, only when they say fucking stupid things.

Anyway, I’ll probably be treated as a despicable person even sharing this, come on, blame me, I’m that bigot full of hatred
Yes, you are a despicable person with imbecilic hateful opinions. Most of the people here are too nice to say this, but I’m not: If you died right now, the world would instantly become a better place for not having you in it. I’m not joking.

Polygamy has historically been very anti-woman, which is why it was banned. To this day, polygamy is being used to force young girls into marriages with men. For many of these young girls, polygamy is a form of sexual slavery, and there is nothing of value in that.

I was mostly referencing the point that you said it was founded in stupidity, which I disagree with. It was founded on the premise of protecting women and children who are unable to speak for themselves, in cultures (aka, all of the world) that devalue women. Polygamy has always existed to benefit men, with weak reasoning often used to try and justify it. There are, I’m sure, many exceptions to the rule, but legalizing it would require a lot of work to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

As a gay person myself I didn’t actually really care about this because I thought passing on traits would be purely biological. However because it turns out not to be and that they have added same sex marriage I am happy and I do not understand the backlash of including sexual equality into the games. If the game was purely about passing on genes then I might understand it more, but its not so I think those opposed to it are being silly and possibly homophobic

” I do not understand the backlash of including sexual equality into the games.”

In real life, the issue of gay marriage is a lot more complicated than just “equality”, and part of the “backlash” is a reaction to the left refusing to even acknowledge any of the right’s objections and slapping a “homophobe” label onto anyone who doesn’t support gay marriage. And there’s also the trolls on both sides making noise as usual, but I’m not talking about them. But the point is that the issue isn’t as black and white and straightforward as just “equality for everyone is good”, and arguing that it is, is ignoring the other side completely.

Go on then. What the good reason for lashing back at Double Fine for deciding they want to find a way to make gay partnerships (maybe in the form of marriage, maybe not) a thing that can happen in the Massive Chalice world?

It’s their choice. It’s a game they’re making. What do their choices do to fail to acknowledge the right or slap the label ‘homophobe’ on anyone.

I don’t see how what you’ve written here, MadTinkerer, has anything to do with the game Massive Chalice, its design, the Kickstarter campaign, Brad Muir, or Double Fine. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

The ”right’s objections” are all homophobic, so expect to be correctly branded as homophobes, not just by the ”left”, but by everyone with common sense and human decency. You don’t have to support gay marriage, but objecting to it is quite vile and pointless.

I don’t think people being offended by homosexuality is the issue, I think it’s the concern that Double Fine might have been lobbied into including something in their game that interferes with core mechanics, just in order to avoid a PR hiccup. I really hope the coupling options in the game won’t affect the basic idea of breeding the perfect warrior by promoting nurture to an equal footing with nature because regardless of how things work in real life – the game isn’t real life and breeding little cartoon supermen (and superwomen) sounds extremely fun. I really hope Double Fine are brave enough to stick to this original core idea.

Can’t say I see how changing the nurture/nature balance makes things any less fun. If anything it offers more interesting options, of the sort that are discussed in the post and other places in this thread.

Is this thread really 500 comments long because of the profound and sweeping gameplay changes this is supposedly going to have? I don’t think so.

part of the “backlash” is a reaction to the left refusing to even acknowledge any of the right’s objections
The left* don’t refuse to acknowledge the rights objections, they just reject them because they’re stupid. All of them. Every single one of their objections is deeply and fundamentally stupid.

* and by “left” I assume you mean “everyone who doesn’t agree with me”.

I’m not going to be forcing an anachronistic post-modern element into an otherwise very pre-modern world, but other people can have fun with it, I suppose. The rest of the game still sounds very worth my money. Like The Sims.

Nah, seriously, let them hold hands, kiss and fade to black with whoever they want – what matters is how great the game plays. A good thing the backers/devs managed to talk about it and add it early enough so it fits with the final design.